IR-Relevant

Victoria University students majoring in International Relations may be troubled to hear that Tariq Ali, an internationally recognised academic, has claimed that New Zealand has no foreign policy.

Ali presented a series of three lectures at Auckland University last week, where he made the comments about New Zealand in a conversation with the popular online news website
stuff.co.nz.

Ali believes that “politically, psychologically and mentally the Australian and New Zealand elites are firmly attached to the United States.” He claims New Zealand should close their foreign ministry and save money by having “little offices in American embassies all over the world.”

Educated at Oxford University, Tariq Ali has been an outspoken activist and leading figure of the international left since the 1960s. He is an editor of the New Left Review and has published books such as Bush in Babylon, which criticised the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to his most recent work The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad.

Victoria University is the only educational institution in the country to offer International Relations as an undergraduate degree. Ali’s recent off-hand remarks have left International Relations students scrabbling to learn the American National Anthem.

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